Why Beauty Matters

translation

English

BBC Sir Roger Scruton's documentary about the shadowy sides of our postmodern consumer society and ways to find a way back to tradition and harmony. Roger Scruton claims that in the 20th century, art, architecture and music turned their backs on beauty and created a cult of ugliness that leads us into the spiritual desert. Roger Scruton, in his provocative BBC documentary on Contemporary Art and Architecture and Music, "Why Beauty Matters," says we are losing beauty and with it the sense of our lives. He claims that beauty "is a value like truth and good," and condemns the fact that the world has turned its back on beauty. In this hourly essay, he wants to convince us that "beauty is a universal value," criticizes the spiritual desert we have done for ourselves, and offers us the opportunity to travel "home." He says that this all started with Marcel Duchamp, "who signed the urinal" with a fictitious name... and placed it in the competition - Scruton admits that this was "made" so the "urinal" satirized the world of art. But that now, along with the reference it gave, was interpreted in a different way. "He has shown us that anything exposed can become art." And he continues to interpret, ... to some extent, rightly, that when something that is shocking and repetitive it becomes empty and boring... ". "Because art needs creativity," Scruton points out (in the background of beautiful Baroque music) to works of contemporary art that "show us the situation here and now,"... with all its ugliness... The works that portray the world with all its imperfections (such as Jeff Koons sugar installations and others)... that such work is ultimately imperfect, because even if they can offer a look into reality, including ugliness, they do not meet basic human needs. Scruton provokes:... "is the result of this really art?" In a sense, in the name of skill, taste and creativity, he definitely rejects existentialism and art by the avant-garde of the last century-and claims that these attempts have everywhere a "cult of ugliness." At the end of the documentary, Scruton will present a truly beautiful Pergolesi song "Stabat Mater" glorifying real virtues in this simplicity and straightness, and... a beautiful work of art. Much of the visual art that Scruton recognizes in the film are traditional figural sculptures and not a small neo-classical concrete copy.

ADAMEC, E.

11. 11. 2012

https://vimeo.com/174592313